I can't believe how bull-headed you fucking fanboys are. Has anyone thought of Activision's stance in this matter? Here comes pretty-boy Tim Schafer, with his genius attitude and his amazing pedigree and his team of charming, talented San Franciscans. He peddles this game based entirely around Rock n' Roll culture, and yet it doesn't have the words "Guitar" and/or "Hero" in the title. On top of that, the cheeky auteur doesn't even let you control it with a plastic instrument! Do you know how that makes Activision feel? To witness a game that is so open about the fact that it's not another Guitar Hero installment? Do you know what that does to a company that cannot physically publish original IP anymore? And has anyone here thought of the shareholders? No, I didn't think so. Fuck you guys.

It's true that they have delivered on almost all their major IPs this generation, already. They didn't ignore us. What they did was create a niche that caters to third party developers who ignore us. Microsoft and Sony have a similar amount of first party releases per year (actually, probably a little better but...) while establishing their systems as catering to hardcore gamers. That creates an environment where third party devs can come in and know that if they make a stupid, silly, shovelware product we will ignore them entirely. Nintendo has not created such an environment, and so with no third party support to speak of, Nintendo's games are the only ones hardcore gamers have to play, and it appears that there is a massive gap between titles. That gap should be filled by the third party. Nintendo isn't ignoring us, but they certainly created this situation for themselves.

At the risk of a backlash, I have to say that I'm frustrated, and even a bit angry by this whole thing. Not by the article itself, which is insightful and interesting as always, but by the fan art and conversations that have resulted. I am more excited about Mirror's Edge than I've been for any other game in a long time. Not just because the mechanic is innovative, but because in Faith, I finally have a main character that I can relate to. I am not like her, but she is an idealized version of what I want to be: a strong, cool, athletic, kickass woman. The last time I played a female character like that who wasn't created by me as my personal avatar was Beyond Good and Evil and that's a five year-old game! She is the female equivalent of every male protagonist character in videogames: made for immersing you into the character, not for gawking at. And...the gaming community can't handle it. Instead of just accepting the character design like any number of the hundreds of less-than-sexy male designs (I think the DICE Faith design IS attractive by the way), we have to dissect her piece by piece to establish exactly why she is unacceptable to look at. One person apparently found it so intolerable that they had to 'fix' it, and people's reactions are, yes that looks better, that was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Why are we discussing that in the first place? Doesn't anyone see that the very fact that people feel a need to debate which picture is hotter is a prime example of the culture of female objectification in this industry? The idea of discussing a male character in this manner is hard to fathom, but also NOT discussing a female lead character in this way is equally hard to fathom and that is frustrating. How many hours did you spend having to stare at Niko Belic? Funny I don't recall a discussion about his nose being too big or his receding hairline. You all managed to survive it unscathed. I have no problem playing games with male leads, or seeing sexy female characters. My issue is that there is so little out there that allows me to have the same level of immersion that male gamers take for granted. I can't tell you how many times I've been jolted back to reality by ridiculous female character designs. Somehow in videogame culture, grown men think that it's perfectly reasonable that they want to stare at half naked characters that resemble helpless 12 year-old girls. Fine, do that. But don't turn around and criticize the one character out there that isn't designed with your boner as it's primary objective.

What I think would work is if there was a law requiring all mature-rated titles to be prefixed with "Fucking", much like many SNES games were prefixed with "Super". I think kids are less likely to get their hands on Grand Theft Auto if they have to ask their mothers, "Can you buy me Fucking Grand Theft Auto?"

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